Second Chances
by Zosie
Summary: Edward and Bella had been so happy together through High School and college, then the night of her 18th birthday, everything they knew was threatened. Things change, when you least expect it. Can Edward be there today for Bella's special day, despite everything? All Human. M for language at this point. A 3 shot.
1. Chapter 1

Second Chances

Part 1 of 3

"Edward is coming home for the wedding?" Rosalie Hale Cullen said in surprise. Her husband's brother was the last person she had expected would come back for the nuptials. Was he feeling masochistic? Why put himself through the pain of watching the girl he had loved so much and not fought hard enough for, walk down the aisle with the man who won her hand?

She sniffed.

It wasn't as if Jacob Black was much of a catch.

What on Earth could he possibly offer Bella Swan that Edward couldn't offer her a hundred fold?

Really, just thinking about the girl wasting herself on that man was tiresome. And where were the happy couple going to live? On the Reservation? Come on.

Rose believed in true love and knew it often meant sacrifices but really?

She shuddered. Thank God she had the brains and forethought to fall in love with a man from this family. She would never deny part of Emmett's attraction had been the fact he came from wealth and their financial future had been safely assured from the start.

They'd returned from a three month honeymoon abroad to a beautiful house built on the far edge of the Cullen estate, close enough so that a short walk through the lush exotic gardens got them to Carlisle and Esme's house, but far enough away so the young couple enjoyed an acceptable degree of privacy. All parties were happy with the arrangement.

And theoretically when Edward married, his house would be located down the back of the estate, near the swift running creek that divided the Cullen property from the woodlands. His plot was located in a far prettier area and at first, Rose had pestered Emmett to beg his parents to let them have that location for themselves, even though the plots had been agreed upon years before she entered the picture.

It wasn't as if Edward would ever marry anyone since he lost Bella, so why would a bachelor need the prettiest location when it was clearly women who would appreciate the flora and fauna that abounded down by the creek?

Why just that one area of land contained such an abundance of wildflowers was a mystery. It was as if it was the chosen location for all sorts of magical inhabitants. The first time Rose saw it, she almost expected fairies to giggle and fly out of their hiding places amongst the various beautiful blooms that only abounded there, in this almost perfect circle of lawn, surrounded by leafy trees that provided the location with complete privacy, something Rosalie found incredibly appealing.

Why, one could wander about naked down there and there would be nobody but one's lover there to witness it.

Maybe she should have set her cap at Edward from the start?

She laughed scornfully at the very idea.

Emmett had always been the one she wanted and the idea of putting up with Edward's 'moods' was more than she could have stood, even in the prettier setting.

Anyway, the remnants of the original house that had been built on this estate was situated in the very center of Edward's plot, and he was rebuilding and restoring the little stone cottage whenever he came home to visit in breaks, and Rose was not a cottage type of woman.

No, she preferred the mini mansion Emmett had agreed to having built for the two of them, and who knows, maybe someday the spare bedrooms would have small inhabitants with her golden hair or Emmett's black curls, living inside those pretty pastel painted walls.

A girl and a boy.

A girl for obvious reasons, because all this beauty Rose possessed needed to be handed on to the next generation, and a boy for her husband to bond with over baseball and football and all those manly things men enjoyed doing with their male offspring. Not that Rose particularly liked small boys. No, the girl first, so she would have someone to pretty up and dress in pink frills before the baby of the more boring gender arrived.

"I hope he will be all right. This is going to be the hardest thing he ever has to endure," Esme said sadly as she checked her hair in the mirror. Perfect as always. Rose had such talent when it came to artfully arranging hair and making what usually looked quite ordinary shine as a work of art almost.

"Carlisle promised to be home by now," she sighed. Being married to a doctor had never been easy and she had attended many functions alone, at least for the first hour or so while her husband sewed up bleeding flesh or set broken limbs before he could escape and join her. Today she particularly wanted him at her side, supporting her through this ordeal, because she couldn't shake the notion from her head that instead of being merely a member of the congregation sitting quietly somewhere in the middle of the pews in the pretty little church, that she should be in the front row on the opposite side, smiling happily at all and sundry as Mother Of The Groom.

This should be Edward's day, Edward's wedding.

Edward's wife.

Esme caught the sob in her throat and tried to cover it as simply a cough but her daughter Alice's eagle eyes saw everything.

"Don't, Mom," she warned gently. If they let their minds wander down that path, all Alice's work would be undone and there wasn't time to clean off panda eyes and begin the make up session again.

Esme swallowed and nodded.

"Bella will always be our friend and as such, we have to respect her right to choose to give herself in matrimony to whoever she chooses," Alice said, hoping her face looked as brave as the words sounded.

"No matter how wrong that choice may be," Rose added darkly and silence fell in the room.

Alice sighed. Ever since they started school as small, shy five year olds she and Bella had been drawn to one another and had become besties that very first day.

As the only and much wanted girl after two boys, Alice had been cosseted and overprotected by her too loving mother, and the very thought of leaving her side to spend most of the day away from her had seemed ludicrous and cruel to five year old Mary Alice Cullen. How would she survive without her Momma? How could they do this to her?

She knew Esme was no happier than she was, but it was the _law _that she attend, and everyone knew the law was an ass, Daddy often said so.

Alice had been daunted by the sea of unfamiliar faces in the small classroom and when one chubby little boy burst into tears at being told he must leave his Mommy and sit with the other children, Alice had gripped Esme's hand that much tighter. Surely Mommy could come to class as well, it wasn't as if she had a job to go to. Her job had been to stay home and look after her daughter while the boys attended school. Even knowing they went daily, five times a week, she had always assumed Emmett and Edward went by choice, because they liked rough housing with their friends and playing those nasty sports that males liked, and it had not occurred to her that she too would have to start attending when her fifth birthday arrived.

She was just a baby, ask Mom and Dad.

Then somehow through her terror, she realized the small brown eyed, brown haired girl she had noticed being dropped off from the Police cruiser was standing at her side. She appeared to have no Mommy at all, and she wasn't crying. Not a single tear.

"I will look after her, Mrs Doctor Cullen," the girl said, taking Alice's other hand between her two small hands.

"Thank you Bella. That's very sweet of you. Didn't your Daddy want to come inside to say goodbye?" her mother asked.

"He's on a case. It's important and I don't need him here now I'm a big girl and can come to school each day to make friends and play with all these cool toys," she answered, clearly eager for a turn at the shape sorter that pale Mike Newton boy was hogging all to himself.

Alice had twice as many toys at least, in her own playroom, so they were no compensation to her for this treachery.

"Come and sit with me, Alice, and we'll wait until Mrs Newton leaves 'cos you know Mike is going to blubber like a big baby and we can snatch that shape sorter for ourselves."

Although the shiny new toy held no appeal to Alice, the idea of sneakily taking it from that horrid Mike was intriguing. Bella was right, he was such a baby and he would start crying for sure when the Mommies left.

"It's a boy thing," Bella confided. "They are all Mommies Boys until they get to be ten or twenty or something. All of them cry and have tantrums because they are not brave like girls. We know there's nothing to worry about, and that we will have a lot of fun today and we know our parents will return at three o'clock to collect us. We girls know we aren't being left here forever, but boys can be stupid and you can't tell them anything, they have to find out for themselves. Girls mature much faster than boys, Charlie says. When is your birthday?"

"September sixteenth," Alice had replied.

"That's MY birthday as well. We are meant to be best friends forever. It's a sign."

"A sign? Like a road sign?" Alice had asked, puzzled.

Bella shrugged.

"Dad always says it's a sign when 'quinsa-dences' happen, so this must be a sign."

"What's a 'quinsa-dence'?" Alice queried.

"I dunno, but they happen for a reason."

"Okay," Alice agreed. Bella knew so much. She was clearly the smartest girl in all of Forks.

Alice suddenly realized the small brunette had led her to the far side of the room, away from Esme, but she knew Bella was right.

It was boys who bellowed like abandoned baby calves, not girls. Because girls were sensible and strong and 'telligent enough to know this day would end and the Mommies would be back.

By the time her own mother had to go, Alice was deeply involved in helping Bella put together a jigsaw puzzle that they were pretending to concentrate on as they waited their chance to grab the toy Mike would soon abandon in his terrified grief when his Mommy left.

Sure enough, when Mrs Cope announced it was time for the children to say Goodbye to their mother's, Mike burst into loud, noisy sobs and Alice had to dash to Esme for a quick hug and be back in time to pounce on the plastic lidded tub; the familiar thing that Bella found so interesting.

Alice wished she had brought in her own so her new friend could play with it all day if she wanted to.

Bella seemed fascinated by the differently shaped holes in the top of the yellow plastic container and the brightly coloured plastic shapes rattling around inside.

She had the advantage, having no parent to farewell and slow her down, so she had quickly grabbed the toy and the girls moved away to the other end of the play rug to remove the lid and tip the shapes out and thread them into the right shaped holes themselves.

"Gosh, it's so easy. How come it took Mike so long to finish doing that?" Alice asked in surprise.

"Because boys are not that smart," Bella replied offhandedly, as though it was common knowledge. She was instantly bored with the simple toy now she had discovered how it worked.

"I think someone left this here by mistake. I think it's a baby's toy, don't you, Alice?"

Alice thought of the identical one that sat in her playroom and immediately decided it had to go into the box Mommy had put in the room for Alice to place all the toys she had outgrown. They would be donated to the children's ward in the local hospital where her Daddy was the Boss.

"Yeah, it's just a baby toy. Maybe that's why Mike likes it so much," she giggled behind her hand. She knew better than to be outright rude and nasty about the pasty faced son of Mr and Mrs Newton who owned the big store where Daddy sometimes took her when they needed new tent pegs or when the boys had lost various parts of their camping or sporting equipment.

Emmett was always coming up with brilliant ideas that often ended with some possession being washed away down the swift flowing creek, though he usually lied and tried to convince Daddy a large bird had swooped down from the sky and stolen it.

Even when it was something as large as a baseball, and there were no birds with big enough claws to make off with that.

Bella was right, she realized. Boys were dumb.

And Edward had confirmed that, when four years ago, instead of keeping up the fight to secure Bella for himself, he had instead come up with a plan to make her miss him and want him and chose him over his competition by going away to New York to do Medical School proper, instead of continuing it in Seattle, and expecting her to be sitting here waiting when he got back.

Naturally Jake Black had rejoiced at Edward's foolhardy departure, and been there for Bella as she cried sad tears down his immaculate white shirt that matched his immaculate white teeth, and instead of Edward's absence making her heart grow fonder, it had instead allowed Jacob to fill the hole Edward's leaving had created in her chest.

It had been fortuitous for Jake. He'd been struggling to come up with a new game plan to convince Bella to choose him over Edward, and suddenly it was handed to him on a plate. Just by being here, and not half a country away, it seemed he had managed to wriggle himself inside her heart, and make her forget the years in High School and college where Edward had been everything to her.

From the very day both of the girls turned fifteen, Bella had wanted Edward for her husband.

She'd never bothered playing the coy games the other girls did; pretending they didn't like a boy who had grabbed their attention, and loudly denying the attraction out of some form of perceived coolness.

Bella had walked into High School, and upon seeing her best friends brother in a different setting, had announced one day she would marry Edward and become Alice's sister for real. There had never been any other boy catch her eye and Alice had watched in delight as her favourite brother fell just as madly in love with Bella.

The only problem was, Bella's Dad had already chosen Bella's future mate and Jake was always _there. _In the Swan's house for dinner several nights each week; always available to teach Bella how to surf or abseil or learn to drive a car, while Edward confidently stayed in his bedroom studying because one day he wanted to become a doctor just like his father, and also, he had that thing about music and spent a lot of time sitting at the piano while the Quileute boy filled in the gap and accompanied Bella to the bonfires on the beach, and the barbecues and parties the other students attended.

Alice had warned him time and again that he was playing with fire, but Edward had always been so confident that Bella loved him as much as he loved her, and of course, the day had come when Jake had openly declared his interest that was obvious to everyone already, and thrown his cap into the ring.

Still Edward had ignored the threat and dismissed Jacob as no contest at all. He was attending college, doing pre med, in Seattle at the time and only home weekends as it was. Then came that night that none of them liked to think about and remember.

Bella's nineteenth birthday.

Esme had insisted on throwing Bella a joint birthday party, knowing Charlie never would think of throwing one himself, and they had gone all out with the decorations and food and drinks. With Alice also turning eighteen that same day, it had seemed obvious to celebrate the double events, and Edward had promised to be home on time, but, as often happened with their father, something had delayed him, and after blowing out the candles alone, Bella had allowed Jacob Black to hold her hand and congratulate her. The kiss should have been nothing more than one of a friend kissing another friend. It had been done right there, in the open, in front of them all, but somehow it had suddenly changed, and gone on too long, and it had morphed into something more.

And Bella had blushed to the roots of her hair, and even allowed Jake to kiss her again as they sat together on the couch watching Alice blow out the candles on her own cake.

Mom had dimmed the lights, and Alice had managed to snuff out every one of the nineteen flickering candles with a single breath, but when she looked up expecting to see her best friend standing by clapping and cheering as the others had, instead she had spied Jake on that couch, beside a strangely intrigued Bella, who had previously never known any other boys lips on her own other than Edward's.

And they were kissing yet again.

It just wasn't the actions of the Bella that Alice knew and loved.

Naturally, Edward arrived at that precise moment and saw the betrayal for himself but there were few people in that room that blamed Bella entirely. Edward was never there, and even when he was home, he was so preoccupied and he had handed Bella to Jake on so many occasions, it was hardly surprising this had happened, in fact, many of them had expected it to happen years earlier.

"You don't toss a faithful hound the occasional scrap while your neighbour is feeding it rump steak and expect it to stay bonded to you," Emmett said , and although the comparison was clumsy, nobody had argued at his logic.

But still, they had all expected Edward to take this unfortunate occurrence as a warning and lift his game, not transfer across to New York in the belief distance would solve everything.

Alice had argued and begged and pleaded for him to rethink, but Edward had been adamant.

All Bella needed was a shock to her system. She needed to feel his absence properly and know what it was like to be so far away from him that even an emergency could not have him back at her side in a few hours, as he could have managed from Seattle.

"She knows I'm willing, and able, to support her. There are magazines galore where she could get a job and do what she really wants to do for a career. It's the obvious answer. She will miss me and fly over to the city within six months, just you wait and see," he'd promised.

Bella's embarrassment over the 'Jake thing' at that party had become an obstacle in her friendship with the Cullen's, and in time, even she and Alice became more distant.

Jasper Whitlock started taking up the Cullen girl's free time, and she was so enamored she let the relationship with Bella wither while she threw all her energy into the budding romance with the pretty blonde boy.

At first, even with the distance between them, it seemed Edward was right and their romance could recover, and he bombarded Bella with flower deliveries, and love notes in the mail. And despite the length of the journey, he came home the first weekend of every month to be with her; as in, stay at her house, sleep in her bed. Try to mend fences anyway he could.

And Bella seemed happy enough. She had her job at the local library and her friends, and she and Edward Skyped into the night every weekend that he wasn't here.

But nothing ever goes to plan.

Charlie took a bullet in the lung and despite surgery, the damage was too severe for long term survival. He died a slow, lingering death, so for months Bella was housebound as she played nurse and Mother, and companion and daughter.

Even when Edward came home, she couldn't just leave Charlie helpless in his bed. He didn't want to die in hospital, and he knew the writing was on the wall, but the burden he placed on his daughter was all encompassing. She quit her job, and tried to make his last year on earth as comfortable as possible.

There were things her father did not want her to help him with and voila, there was the ever helpful Jake, always on hand to do all the personal care ablutions necessary.

So, naturally, Edward stopped coming home as often , figuring as only a man could, that he was just another chore on her list when he stayed over; never seeing he was actually her link to sanity. He could lighten her load by not demanding her time and attention as often. It was all he could do for her.

So, her sanity link gone, once again, she started depending more and more on Jacob. His own father started coming over to Charlie-sit twice a week in the evenings and every single Saturday, always accompanied by one other more able bodied man from the tribe, so 'the kids' got a break and got to do the sort of things twenty somethings needed to do.

It was inevitable that in her exhaustion, Bella could possibly start to mistake what had only ever been friendship, apart from that one unspoken of evening, for something different.

And when Charlie finally passed on, Edward could only stay the one night, because he had exams to attend back in NY.

It just wasn't enough. Bella needed someone right there and guess who was available, and, as it happens, more than willing?

The fight was brutal and loud and too damaging to come back from, when Edward flew home a few weeks later to check on his Bella and found her curled up asleep in the arms of Jacob Black.

In her bed.

Of course, had he taken the time to observe before going crazy, he would have noted Jake was sleeping above the covers, fully clothed, and Bella was tucked in safe and sound below them.

But when you arrive home exhausted from late nights and exams and long flights, your head rarely has the capacity to think rationally, and suddenly words had been spoken that couldn't be taken back, and accusations hurled back and forth between all three.

Edward accused Bella of being truly, completely unfaithful in the most unforgivable way; Jake accused Edward of neglecting his girl and never putting her needs ahead of his own, and Bella had tearfully fled to her Mother's far off home in Florida and refused to speak to either one of them again.

Of course, Jacob had the time to follow her there a few weeks later, having given her time to calm down; unlike Edward, who had to begin his residency. It could not be delayed for a few months to fit into his preferred schedule.

So, that was it.

The end for Edward and Bella, and maybe the beginning for Bella and Jake.

And now it had led to today.

Alice held no grudges; she knew had she been through the same issues that had been thrown at her friend, she would have probably given up on her Edward type person even earlier. She and Bella had become close friends again during the last couple of months and Bella needed Alice on her side. With their history, of course Alice had thrown out all the stops and done everything she could for her very best friend. Whatever Bella needed, she would support her and help her achieve her goals.

And although Rose still huffed and puffed and hated the path Bella had chosen to walk, deep down she knew she would have been gone long before Bella left, in the same circumstances.

But that didn't mean she had to like Jacob Black.

Stupid long haired Indian Chief-to-be.

Shouldn't he be marrying a Quileute? I mean, she thought, surely the kid of the next Chief should be pure blood, not some half Paleface? Didn't those people have rules? How would they feel if the next Chief after Jake happened to be blonde haired and blue eyed, not that it was likely with Bella being a brown eyed brunette and all, but Renee was a blue eyed blonde. The future kid could possibly take after Granny.

As much as she disliked many of Edward's character flaws, she did love him like a brother and she knew how broken and shattered he was, and how proud and determined he could be.

When he got the invitation to Bella and Jake's wedding, he had called Rose, of all people, and cried to her over the phone.

It had all gone so very wrong. He just didn't understand. But the one thing he did know was, that Isabella was his One, and if he couldn't marry her then he would never marry anyone.

And Rose knew him well enough to know that could well be the truth.

He'd filed his Intention To Marry Bella way back when she'd barely graduated High School, and had always considered them engaged, though he had never got as far as proposing and getting a promise from her. But we all expected it to happen, Rose fumed.

It should have happened. Edward should have married her when Bella was eighteen years old and they were so in love that nobody considered anyone or anything could ever come between them.

She knew that idea would be ridiculous for any other couple, but somehow she knew, had that happened, those two would have managed to overcome all these obstacles that had instead, torn them apart.

She checked herself in the mirror. Her dress was fashionable, expensive and custom made. It fit her voluptuous body like a glove, or like a second skin actually.

It was also black.

In her opinion, there was nothing to celebrate today, only something to mourn.

And if Edward needed to cry on her shoulder, she would damn well welcome that and she would support him and cry with him, because this whole marriage was a travesty and complete bullshit.

And Emmett would appreciate her being there for Edward, and be at his other side, helping him as well.

A black dress for a Black occasion, in more ways than one.

Esme had not even dared telling her that black was grossly inappropriate so Rose took that to mean the woman agreed and shared her convictions.

Jasper Whitlock arrived and Alice's mood changed instantly as the handsome young man took her tiny hands inside his and kissed her lips as she met him at the front door.

"It's time," he said quietly, and Rose was thrown back to him saying those same words the day they went to Charlie Swan's funeral. The mood was much the same, come to think of it.

Rose wished she had some black roses to slip into Bella's bouquet.

"Carlisle will have to meet us at the Church," Esme said crossly. Honestly, if there was _one _day she really needed him, today was that day. She sent yet another text but knew better than to hope for a reply. He was probably elbows deep inside some drunk drivers chest, trying to save his life.

She smiled sadly at Jasper and allowed him to take her arm with his free hand that wasn't around her daughter's shoulders and went to his car. Alice would follow in her own car when she was ready. She had duties to attend to in her role as Bella's one and only bridesmaid.

Emmett finally appeared from his house, looking clean and neat and tidy, with his wild black curls neatly subdued for once and she smiled her approval as he assisted his wife into their car.

And like the funeral procession two years earlier, they made their way to the Church, to watch Bella Swan make the biggest mistake of her life.

EPOV

"You can do this," echoed in my brain. In theory, I knew I could. In practice, I was pretty sure my legs were going to fail me and let me fall to the ground, where I'd lie in some heap of wailing agony while my Bella allowed that dog to slide his ring onto the finger that should be wearing my ring already.

I know I've been a complete fool and should have done something, right from the start. I should have taken a gap year before college and cemented our relationship and maybe even married her then, despite our tender ages, hers in particular.

Who'd have thought there were more foolhardy actions to take than marrying your girl when she was only just eighteen? Bella would have waited for my education to become complete, all those years, but at my side, not off partying with Black.

That would have been unacceptable, if she was a married woman. She could have hung out with Rose when Alice was busy chasing Jasper, or with Esme, and exchanged recipes and knitting patterns.

Damn. As much as I hate Jacob Black, I hate myself way more.

Medicine could have waited. I'd met many married men, and women, who had taken some generic low paying job for a couple of years while they got their relationships solidified, and married their partners, and some even had babies, before starting Medical School.

Then they faced the long, hard years together, as a couple, as a family, and made the most of every holiday and break, so their marriages stayed strong through the tough times when he or she didn't actually make it home at night for a week or more, and caught a few hours shut eye whenever they could.

It wasn't like the medical shows on tv where the interns had the time and energy to screw around. You worked or you ate or you slept, and if you were really lucky, you did all three in the same day.

Bella and I could have made it work, if we'd built the foundations first.

Too late.

I guess I had been too self obsessed and naive, because had it been her doing the studying and putting in the hours, I would not have dreamed of going out with some convenient girl just for her company while the girl I loved sweated the hours away over her books.

I would have been the one bringing her coffee and chocolate and insisting she take a five minute break to kiss and cuddle and talk briefly about our love and our future.

I wish she had done that for me.

I suppose that was unreasonable, and Bella would only be young once and anyway, I hadn't wanted her to miss out on any experiences other girls her age got to enjoy. And she genuinely believed she only saw Jake as a friend, nothing more.

We talked about it, late at night when I lay beside her in her bed, and she kissed away any doubts and fears I had, because I wasn't sure boys and girls could ever be 'just friends', when one of them clearly was madly in love with the other.

But I trusted Bella.

She never lied to me about anything, big or small. When she made a mistake, she had her hand up owning it before anyone knew what she had done. And she loved me. There was no way to mistake that.

She gave herself to me freely and happily, and let me make her into a woman, and myself into a man, but that was of secondary importance. She had never let any other male touch her or kiss her, and she was all mine, and none of that 'first you have to marry me' nonsense, though God knows I would have.

When Bella was in Senior Year she had decided it was the right time.

Junior Year she still felt a little unsure, not quite ready for a proper adult relationship and it had been hard and frustrating for both of us, and in truth, we had nearly slipped up a few times and just done the deed, but one of us was always a little more aware than the other and that person had to be in control and call a halt before anything too heavy happened.

We both wanted to wait until we were sure we were ready for the consequences.

There were plenty of other, lesser, stress releasing things we could do, and we did them all, repeatedly.

In the break between her Junior and Senior Years, Bella and I fronted up at Dad's office and asked him to make her safe. We knew our love was going to progress and we wanted it to, but we both needed to know there would not be any serious repercussions.

Our duel lack of experience with other partners made testing unnecessary but we could still start a baby and we were far from ready for anything that permanent and mature.

But we were getting there.

Dad had talked to us both, together and separately, and we had convinced him we were being sensible and we were ready and this was not just some reckless distraction.

This was love, and love always wants to be expressed in every single possible way.

He had agreed.

I'm sure Charlie assumed her virginity was long gone before it really was, but he had that look of resignation usually seen on someone who knew he couldn't fight a hurricane with a paper fan.

Dad had told me how surprised he was when told she was actually still intact and wanting his permission to be prescribed the Pill.

He'd agreed, just as Bella had hoped. Just like that. I think he was grateful to have the chance to close the stable door before the horse bolted, so to speak.

Making love to Bella had been the highlight of my life.

I assumed it meant we were tied together forever, because I knew I would never want to be so close and intimate with any other woman, and sadly for me, that hasn't changed.

I presume Jake has taken over where I left off and kept Bella happy in bed, and satisfied with their love life, because Bella had always loved the physical act as much as the kissing and breathlessly spoken words of love I'd whispered in her ear as we became as close as humanly possible so many, many wonderful nights, and probably just as many days ...

I can't think about it.

She was mine, all mine. For those few years, she was my world but that unfortunately had the side effect of making me want to rush and get everything into place so we could get married and make it legal and move on to the next level. I foolishly expected she knew why I studied like there was no tomorrow, and why I worked so hard and did anything I could for extra credits. I wanted to condense the time frame of my studies and get through medical school faster than any of the other students and I did achieve that, but at what cost?

It cost me the very reason I was doing it.

Now here I am, very desirable, marriageable material, and the only girl I want to want me is marrying somebody else.

Today.

The past three months since the invitation arrived has been a blur and I worry for my liver some days, but how else do I get through this?

Looking out the window, I see Jasper Whitlock leading my Mom to his car in the distance, and I know it's time to man up and go.

My tux looks amazing, like it was made for me, just as it was. I may be merely a guest, but I will be the best dressed guest there.

My cottage is all but finished, just the final few fiddly bits to be taken care of, like painting the interior and finishing the decorating, but I have no clue as to what would suit this little house. A woman would know in an instant, but I don't want to live in another house decorated to my Mom's taste.

I wonder what Bella would have chosen, if she had not fallen out of love with me and we were the ones facing one another at either end of the aisle today?

Would she want all girly shabby chic? All pinks and mauve's on the walls?

All florals on the furniture?

I would not care if she wrapped the place from top to bottom in bright lipstick pink, just so long as she was here living with me, being by my side.

I don't even know where she is going to live, with Jacob.

In Charlie's old house? With Billy on the Rez?

Not here. Not with me. That's the sad truth.

My life is now defined in a way I never wanted or expected. I am back in Forks for good but only Carlisle knows. He's given me a place at the hospital to finish my final year and next year I can either stay on as hospital staff or open my own practice.

I want to remain here, so I can live on the outskirts of Bella's life, and make sure she is always safe and cherished by Jake in a way I neglected to cherish her myself. Don't get me wrong; I always cherished her in my heart, but like many men, I made the mistake of not telling her often enough.

I pull out the documentation for the wedding I had planned once upon a time, many moons ago.

The words hurt too much so I slip them into my pocket.

I knew how I felt and I assumed she knew as well.

I lived for her, and I never considered any future but that of her being my wife and having my babies and try as I might, I cannot substitute any other woman into her place in my dreams.

Or even in my bed.

Don't even try to tell me these things happen to every man at some point because it sure does not happen to men my age. Not if they are healthy and normal, which I clearly am not.

Every single time I've felt the urge, for lust only, never love, and have briefly thought of inviting some woman to my bed, I've 'failed to launch'. It's lucky I've never actually taken one home. The complete lack of response in my pants as I stood there, chatting over the drink I bought her, had always let me know it was not going to happen.

No other woman can be to me what Bella was and even shutting my eyes and pretending it would be her warm body naked beside me cannot make things happen because I'm just not that good at lying to myself.

I touched a few hands, just to feel for any connection or just a hint of a promise of a sexual reaction from myself, but nothing.

I kissed the occasional cheek, even lips, but never felt anything for the women who owned those lips, and walking away, leaving her disappointed and confused at the bar was better than risking leaving her the same way in bed.

Nobody else feels like Bella felt. Nobody has that skin that is so soft it's like a newborn baby's skin. Nobody smells like she smells. Nobody sighs with pleasure as we embrace and know what is about to happen. But I don't want them too, either.

I just don't want any other women, and it's going to be a big problem. I don't see any way of overcoming it, either. Even my friend Johnny Walker fails to help.

I was always a Jack Daniels fan but now it reminds me of Bella. Not that she drank it herself, it's just that I drank it in her presence. It's like everything else. I can't eat pasta, because Bella used to cook me pasta.

I can't go swimming because I keep turning to find her, to keep her safe in the surf, as I always did, and she's not there. I can''t even look at the sea at La Push without her ghost running along the sand at the very edge of the water, towards me, laughing as she kicks up the foam, calling to me.

"Come on in, Edward, the water's fine," even if it's close to freezing. I don't think the girl has any sense of feeling when it comes to swimming. She wants to go in regardless of whether or not her skin instantly turns blue.

I wonder if Jake wraps her in a beach towel and holds his arms around her little shivering body afterwards and makes her warm, like I used to. I wonder if he covers her face with kisses to make her blush so her face becomes heated again.

I wonder if he snuggles with her under a beach blanket and keeps her against his chest so he can kiss the top of her head and feel his heart threaten to explode with love for her because she is truly the most wonderful, beautiful, precious girl in the Universe?

"You are so lucky you don't wear make-up because if I had done your make-up and you cried it all away, I'd be forced to slap you," my annoying younger sister says.

I didn't even see her walking down here to my cottage.

"It's been hard enough keeping Mom from blubbering and ruining hers, so don't you dare set her off," Alice warned.

I looked into her hazel eyes and realized I didn't even want to be in her company any more, because _she _reminds me more of Bella than the rest of them put together.

"I was wrong. I cannot possibly bear to live here," I confess.

"Bella's never seen this house rebuilt. She doesn't know it exists as anything more than a broken down, bare empty shell," Alice replies. That sounded like a description of me.

"I don't think that matters," I explain. "I built it for her, even though I knew I'd lost her. I can feel her here, Alice. I can hear her berating me for not biting the bullet and getting on with the painting. I can imagine her choosing furniture and moving it around a dozen times to find just the right place for each piece. I can see her in the main bedroom, waiting for me," I gasp, and I'm gone.

Alice is in my arms, her tears falling as hard as my own and I know how hard she's tried to hide the loss she feels herself.

Today it ends.

It may have ended for all intents and purposes years ago, as far as Bella is concerned, but for me, today is the ending. Today there's no turning back.

Even if the marriage flounders and fails to last the distance, she will always have been his wife first and I can't handle it.

"She's mine, Alice," I cry, like some spoiled five year old. "I love her like no other human has ever loved anyone. How could she not know that? Or does she know it, and just not care any more?"

"I have no words," my sister says, for what has to be the first and last time in her life, because Alice always has her words.

"He's taken her from me and I never thought that was possible. She was made for me. We are a perfect fit, in every way. She fits, Alice. She's my missing puzzle piece. Without her I'm useless and incomplete and I know it's never going to change. I'm never going to be a whole person."

"I'm so sorry." she answers, her hands rubbing my back as she holds me in a death grip around my torso that has not been embraced in so very long.

But these are not the arms I want to hold me. They are the wrong arms and I hate her a little for that. I hate her because she can still be Bella's friend and I can't. I hate her because she has her One and she will never, ever, be stupid and complacent and risk losing him. I hate her because Jasper would never go.

I hate her because she will talk to Bella, and laugh with Bella, and share hours of Bella's life, inside Bella's house, and they will trade secrets and gossip and be as they always have been.

Her life will not be torn apart by today.

Sure, I know she wishes it was me waiting for her friend but she's going to be there for Bella anyway.

"Edward, I am her bridesmaid. I have to go and make sure she is ready. And you have to be there. You need closure, or you will never manage to move on. Do this for her but also do it for yourself."

I pull back and kiss her forehead because I want, I need, for Bella to have friends like Alice, who love her.

"I'm going to ask Dad to let me sell this cottage. We all have separate title deeds. This is my land," I murmur.

"You do whatever you have to do, Edward, but tomorrow is soon enough. Today you need to say goodbye to Bella and all she meant to you. You won't be alone, you have us, your family, and we love you. Now come with me, they are all at the church already, waiting for you."

"I can drive myself," I reply.

"Can you? I don't think you can. Or that you should," she says.

"Alice, I'm not even sure I'm going to turn up. Just go without me. I'll either drive myself or go catch a plane back to New York."

"You don't have an apartment there any more," she reminds me.

"Then I'll go visit the Denali's in Alaska," I growl. "I don't care where I go. Now you go."

"I can't leave you unless you promise me you will be there. For me, if not for yourself. I have to see with my own eyes that you survive this."

"All right, but just go. Bella needs you," I growl.

"You have never broken a promise to me, don't start today," she warned, kissing my cheek.

She left, running back up the path that joins our properties together, and I go sit in my car.

Can I do this?

I start the engine and it purrs.

I drive, but not straight there.

It doesn't matter at all if I'm late because I'm already far too late in every way that counts.

I drive past Forks High, where my life began.

I drive past Charlie's house, and gaze up at the window where my Bella used to sit and wait for me.

I drive past La Push and think about the cliffs and the rocks below.

So many memories.

I want to just leave but it's true, I have never broken any promise I ever made to my sister, and who knows, she could be right.

I need closure.

I need to let go and move on, and seeing Bella leave the church on _his_ arm will at least close the door on any possibility that there could ever be any type of future for us. I guess I need to see that for myself.

I drive to the church and sit and wait.

And here she comes.

She is driving herself, because Billy Black is giving her away.

She slips from the drivers seat and hauls her white frock up higher and sort of ties it around her waist.

Alice runs to her, shrieking that she will ruin it, and she tucks and folds it in an acceptable to her way, while Bella helps her Father-in-law from the cab of the truck.

Then Alice supports him as Bella goes to the rear and hauls the folded wheelchair over and out, and starts to set it up.

And then we all hear it.

The squeal of rubber as tyres protest at the angle they are hitting the ground as the blue van entering the parking lot spins out of control.

Bella holds her hands up as if they will protect her and keep the truck from squishing her.

And without thought, I'm suddenly there beside her, pushing her, throwing her from it's path and she bangs her head so loudly on the ground I wonder if I've killed her anyway as the van passes harmlessly by and screeches to a stop.

Then Carlisle is there, running late from the hospital, and he kneels before her and gingerly feels her skull.

I tear hair from my head and pace on the spot. I'm a fucking doctor, as good as, why did I let her fall so hard? I could have done something better, something less dangerous.

Her eyes open and she gazes at me.

Then she looks at my Dad and frowns.

"Bella, are you okay?" he asks, God knows why. He should know, not her.

She glances around, sees her dress, and tries to stand up. Dad supports her.

Alice fusses around, like the dress matters. It's not torn or stained and she sighs with relief and I want to smack her. Hard. For caring about a fucking dress.

I can't help myself. I grab Bella into my arms and hold her close and feel her heartbeat flutter against my chest. She molds her body close to mine and her breathing hitches. In that moment, it's like we have never been apart and I can feel the connection still, making our bodies tingle, making every memory flick through our minds like a video montage of our history together.

"You're alive," I say in wonder.

I kiss the top of her perfect head.

She pulls away and smiles one of her devastating smiles at me.

"I'm okay. Let's do this," Bella announces.

Dad halts her and shines a light into her eyes, then feels the bump on her head again.

"You seem fine but any nausea, or headaches, you tell me."

I hate my father in that moment because he should be calling an ambulance and getting her to hospital. Fuck the wedding.

"She's fine, Edward," he tells me, in answer to my scowl.

"I'm fine, Edward," she backs him up.

Billy Black looks bewildered as Bella grips Carlisle's arm and barely spares him a glance. Alice helps him into his chair.

"Bella, isn't Billy giving you away?" I call.

"He is?" Bella says in surprise. "I just assumed Carlisle..."

She pauses at the door and looks at me again.

"Edward, shouldn't you be inside?" she asks, laughing like that's a joke.

I sigh and walk past her and sit in the back row. She frowns and looks at the front and sees Jake waiting and turns to me again.

"Is this a joke? It's not funny. Go wait for me to walk to you. I've waited all my life for this moment, stop kidding around."

She looks angry.

She looks back at Jacob.

"How could you imagine I would be amused by your tomfoolery **on my wedding day!**

Jake, stand beside me as my Best man and stop being an idiot. Edward, I should turn and walk out this door for this, but I forgive you. Only you. You are so lucky I love you more than life itself. You had better have remembered to bring my ring.

Why isn't Emmett your best man? What's happening here?"

She looks as confused as I feel.

"Edward. Last chance. Get down the front or I will call this whole wedding off."

I hurry down the front and shrug at Jacob, as I push him into place as Bella's Best man. Emmett laughs and raises his hands, joined in victory, and runs to stand beside me. Jake glares at us both.

"Forget it, Cullen," he snarls.

"You argue with her. I'm just doing what she told me to do," I reply.

"Bella, you are here to marry me," Jacob protests.

She snorts.

It's very unfeminine yet music to my ears.

"Ha ha. Hilarious. If you don't get to the side and assist me marrying the only man I have ever loved, I will never speak to you again. You pair are seriously winding me up."

Jake is too devastated to speak any further so of course I take full advantage.

"You need to change the groom's name. Edward Anthony Masen Cullen," I tell the preacher man.

"This is highly irregular," he blusters.

"Live with it," I reply, slipping him a c note and our papers from the wedding that never happened.

He shrugs and pencils in my name.

Dad walks her down the aisle and I watch, smiling, and he hands her precious hand into mine and we face one another.

"Is this what you truly want, Bella?" I ask her.

"Edward, I would never marry anyone else but you," she replies. It's the truth and we both know it.

"Dearly beloved " he begins, but it's the ending I prefer. "I now pronounce you husband and wife. What God has joined together let no man put asunder."

I don't know if what happened is legal, but Jasper will figure it out. He is the Cullen family lawyer, soon to be the lawyer in the Cullen family.

Sure, I know at some point she will remember and she may well get very angry and upset and toss me off a cliff top but if I get to enjoy the honeymoon before that happens, I shall go to my doom gladly, and die a happy man.

X~x~X~x~X


	2. Chapter 2

Second Chances

Part 2

M rating is now fo Piano Sex.

EPOV

"What do we do now?" Alice whispered as the flashes flashed and Bella posed for the 'bride only' photos for the photographer Jake had hired, in front of the church. I was not letting her out of my sight, particularly not letting Jake drag her off for an explanation. " Dad had rechecked her eyes and skull and declared her fit and well.

"I'm guessing it would be really bad form to turn up at the Reception and take over?" Alice continued.

I hadn't thought of that.

"Where was it being held?" I quizzed her.

"They got caterers in at Charlie's house. It was to be a casual, laid back affair. You know how your wife hates a fuss. But I think the Quileutes might go on the warpath and kill every Cullen if we turn up there now."

Your wife.

Most amazing words in the English language.

My wife.

"Edward?" Alice prompted.

"Ask Mom," I decided, walking up and standing where indicated as my wife stood beside me for the Happy Couple poses.

Jacob Black and his father watched with narrowed eyes and I could almost feel the hate they radiated. Like the rest of the congregation, they had no knowledge of the accident and thus no explanation for why Bella insisted on marrying me.

"Just wait," Billy said. "He's done something to her. Drugged her, maybe? Whatever it was, it will wear off someday and Bella will know the truth then he shall be punished in ways far more painful than anything we could ever do to him." Billy's tone was harsh and threatening but his words were probably true.

Bella's fury knew no bounds. I may not believe in hitting women but she had no such principles against hitting men, as I had found out a few times when I had pushed jokes too far in the past and she had snapped.

She had her limits, and I think she even enjoyed it when I had exceeded those limits and she'd struck out at me. Like those tiny, delicate hands could ever actually hurt me. She was more in danger of breaking her bones.

"Okay, now we just need a couple of shots of the bride and groom kissing," the photographer suggested and suddenly Bella was molded against me from head to toe and her tongue was in my mouth, heading for down my throat.

I see my 'problem' has been resolved. I tried to turn slightly off center so the bulge in my pants was not directly facing the camera. Bella slipped her hand between our bodies and fucking teased me as she kissed and moaned into my mouth and almost caused me to come in my pants.

I grabbed the back of her hair gently and pulled her face away, and whispered in her ear.

"Bella, Baby, I don't want to waste a single drop until I'm inside you, okay? Stop doing that, please or I may toss you to the ground and take you right here and now. I don't think you want photos of that happening."

"Don't bet on it," she whispered, grinding subtly against me. "Remind me. Did we do one of those stupid pacts to give up sex until after the wedding because it feels like it's been a very long while since you and I ..."

I had to pull back before this wedding video Rose was filming needed an Adults Only rating.

"If you behave yourself until we are alone, I'll reward you in so many ways you won't be able to sit down for a week," I promised.

Bella instantly turned back into Bella The Virgin and kept her hands to herself and made sure we had an inch or two of vacant space between our overeager bodies.

I managed to calm down and relax my boner away.

Alice jumped to my side and smiled at Bella as she whispered out of the corner of her mouth to me.

"Mom says everything is under control and the caterers are moving everything to her house but they need a little time to pack up and get it back into their van. Maybe you could play piano for the guests or something."

"Great idea," I enthused. "I'm a little rusty. Keep everyone here and I'll take Bella back to the house and practice."

"Mom wants some photos taken in the yard, down near the rose beds, so take the photographer," she called as I rushed my bride towards my car.

"No. We want photos of all the guests here first. In group shots according to height, and then more photos with them sorted by ...the colour of their outfits, and then individually. And take them slowly."

Alice smirked knowingly but ran back and started organizing. I figured we had thirty minutes, tops.

"We need to beat everyone back to the house," I explained to my darling wife as I sped from the car park. I waved cheerily at Tyler, who had almost killed Bella with his careless driving yet made the whole nightmare wedding become the most perfect event imaginable.

I must send him a gift. What does every single twenty something man want? Maybe a new car with safer tyres. He deserved it.

I saw Bella frown in surprise at Jake's car and the usual "Just Married" decorations and tin cans tied behind it.

"Is Jake getting married as well today?" she asked in confusion.

"I somehow doubt that," I answered. "Maybe someone mistook his car for mine."

Yes, because people cannot tell the difference between a VW Rabbit and an Aston Martin Vanquish.

"Maybe," she replied skeptically.

I carried her across my parents threshold and kicked the door closed behind us. I almost took her right there and then, such was my impatience.

"Bella, I know it's been far too long but we have to be quick before the others follow us here. Sorry Baby, but it's quick or not at all and not at all is not an option."

She turned and ran for the Music Room, the scene of many sexual hi-jinks when she was still in Senior Year at High School and I was home from college visiting, if we were the only two in the house. Back then, Rose and Emmett were into outdoor sex, and Alice was yet to discover carnal delights so was off at the mall. Once upon a time, my sister thought shopping was the ultimate thrill.

Bella hauled herself up onto my grand piano and spread herself across it.

"Dress on or off?" she asked. I love a co-operative Bella.

"On. I'll never get the chance to make love to you in your wedding gown ever again," I replied, dropping my coat onto a chair and stepping out of my trousers and silk boxer shorts.

Bella's legs were encased in white silk stockings that were being held up by a lace suspender belt and she lacked panties all together. She was so damn sexy and hot.

I paused for a single moment, disturbed that this had been all for him, not me, but whatever. She was mine now, no matter what sexual adventures the two of them had performed in the past.

I slid the skirt of her dress up out of the way then slid my hand up her thigh and she opened her legs and lay back.

My lips were on her 'lower lips' and I almost came as I tasted her once familiar sweetness. It had been too damned long. I decided she deserved some quick foreplay and licked between her folds and found her bunch of nerves.

She'd told me once that she liked it when I sucked on her right there and teased her with my tongue and I wanted her to remember how good that used to make her feel. She exploded so fast I was unprepared and my mouth moved down to catch her sweet juices.

Fuck, how had I survived at all without her, without this? How the fuck had I ever let things go so badly wrong that she had left me?

She was my world, my Universe.

She stopped pulsing and sat up, forcing me onto my back and putting her mouth where no other mouth had ever been.

Only hers.

I could have tried having women suck me off but even that had seemed wrong, and I only wanted her lips around me. Now I was so glad I had waited.

"Bellaaa," I cried, thrusting into her mouth as she swirled her tongue around my tip, then sucked me down deep into her throat. This was Heaven. I had no doubts at all. I may go to Hell for deceiving her into this marriage but the ride was worth it.

She grabbed at my bare ass and pulled me in closer, her fingers digging into my flesh and I felt one hand cradle my family jewels, turning me on so much I lost it down her throat on about the fifth thrust.

She swallowed and I hardened up again instantly as she backed off and sat up grinning.

"We did do that ridiculous pre wedding abstinence thing, admit it. I never got it. You can't revirginize so stopping for a period of time before the nuptials does not make us turn back to untouched and innocent again so what's the point? I can't believe you made us do that. How long has it been? I can't remember."

"Three years," I admitted quietly, honestly. For me; for us, as a couple. How long for her, I have no idea.

"No," she protested. "I would never agree to three years abstinence."

No, she would not have.

"We wanted tonight to be amazing," I told her, grabbing her ankles and sliding her back down onto her back, placing her pretty white wedding shoes on my shoulders as I slid myself inside her, where I belonged.

We both held our breaths and gazed at one another. She knew I was meant to be inside her and she wanted me as much as I wanted her, so I pushed away the lingering doubts about what I had done.

She could remember at any given moment; there was no time frame for recovery from amnesia induced by a blow to the head. I had to enjoy everything she was willing to give me, now.

A better man may have sat her down and explained everything to her and let her make her own decisions but she was urging me on, flexing her pelvis , almost crying with desire.

Like I could resist her.

I had never been able to in the past and three years without her had only made it completely impossible.

I was torn between going slow and just watching her face and chancing the guests walking in on us; and going fast and furious and saving the pretty stuff for tonight.

Bella smiled up at me. She knew exactly what I was debating internally.

"Slow. I don't even care if they catch us. I want to enjoy every inch of you."

I gave her every inch and ran my hands over the silky white fabric that covered her breasts and she slipped the bodice down and gave me her bare nipples to play with.

No bra. The girl had never believed in bras.

I like a woman who sticks to her convictions.

I was feeling completely overwhelmed, being back with her; inside her; her whole body my playground again.

I love her so very much and we should have never, ever been apart, not for a single second.

I wanted to cry but then she would ask me why and I couldn't tell her, not yet. Maybe one day, if she didn't snap out of this and remember all by herself.

We set a pace that suited us both and the ending was as wonderful as I remembered. She fluttered around me and I let go and filled her, and pressed myself in hard as it happened so she kept every drop.

"I'm on the Pill, right?" she asked. You have no idea how much I was tempted to tell her, no, she had a contraceptive implant, just so she wouldn't think to continue taking them, so I could knock her up and keep her forever, no matter what happened.

Even if she remembered, if she was pregnant with my baby, surely she would not leave me. But creating a new life was too much of a responsibility to trick her into. That would only happen when she was ready and wanted it herself.

"You are," I confirmed. Surely she was? She knew what would happen tonight, even if she was wrong about who it was going to happen with, and I can't believe she and Jake would want to start a honeymoon baby.

"By the way, I love you, Mrs Cullen," I told her. I had never stopped loving her, to be honest.

She sat up and threw her arms around my neck.

"I love you Edward. I always have, ever since I saw you at High School when I was fifteen years old. The age gap seemed a roadblock then, but it's nothing now. I'm so glad we belong to one another. It's always felt so right, so meant to be."

"You won't hear any arguments from me," I agreed. "We have to go shower. We have guests due and if I'm not mistaken, that is the caterers van pulling up."

Bella squealed and grabbed at her dress and tried to haul it back into place so I lifted her off the piano into my arms and headed for the staircase at a run.

We made it up to the second flight of stairs before the front door banged open and many voices invaded the house, echoing as the Head Chef shouted orders to his minions.

My bedroom was all alone on the third floor so I dropped her on my childhood bed and gently stripped her completely naked.

She kept her arms and hands out of the way and let me see her whole beautiful body.

I was admiring each familiar inch , then I saw something that made me catch my breath. How could I have not noticed this before? How could I have been so carried away with needing to reclaim her that my eyes had missed this earlier?

In the sunlight that streamed into my bedroom, and danced across her abdomen, I could see the thin silver line of a scar, almost hidden in her pubic hair. And it looked for all the world like the kind of scar a woman is left with following a c section.

There were other possibilities, but that was the most likely.

I bent my head down and kissed along it's length.

"What happened, Bella? Where did this scar come from?" I asked her softly.

"Which scar? I am a little clumsy, you know."

"This scar is not from any accident," I told her. Not the type she was thinking of.

I traced the line with my finger and she sat up in shock, and looked down and felt it for herself.

"It feels like an operation scar," she said. "But I've never had any operations. Have I, Edward? And why the jungle? Why haven't I waxed?"

She'd lost three years of time.

Just as she no longer remembered moving past friendship into something with Jacob, she'd also forgotten every other aspect of her life as well.

I put my arms around her and held her against my body. Dad would have told me, if he knew what had caused this. Even after I left and he knew she had moved on, he always managed to slip in little bits of 'Bella news' into his phone calls, ever since Jake brought her home again from her prolonged vacation with her mom in Florida.

Carlisle had spoken of Bella as if she were a beloved cousin or something. He knew I wanted to know anything and everything about her. She wasn't his patient so there was no medical news, no breach of patient confidentiality; just comments about where he had seen her and with whom.

But if she had been pregnant and had a baby, he surely would have mentioned it.

Whose baby, I wondered. And where is it now?

X~x~X~x~X

Bella looked completely confused and I took her into the shower and distracted her under the water so she would relax and enjoy the reception. She seemed to enjoy kissing me and I certainly wanted to kiss her as much as possible for as long as she let me.

It was scary, knowing one day she would remember everything, and then it could all be wrenched from me again because Bella was simply not the kind of girl who would throw her hands up and quietly accept the fact we were married once she knew she had intended to wed Jake, not me.

No mere piece of paper would bind her to me.

Charlie and Renee had been divorced so she didn't even have a family ashamed to have any divorces in it's history; we would not be the first.

"Where's your Mom?" I asked suddenly. Surely even the perpetually disinterested Renee would have made the trip here for her only child's wedding? But I hadn't seen her in the church or outside and surely she would have risen and objected to the change of groom.

Bella thought about it.

"I think she couldn't fly here. Somebody in church said it was a pity she was so advanced in her pregnancy with Phil's new baby that she can't fly. Is that possible?"

"It would be a last chance baby but I suppose she could be pregnant. How old was she when you were born?  
"Seventeen. Can you imagine that?" Bella replied.

I smiled.

" We would have coped."

"But we didn't sleep together until I was eighteen so that could never have happened to us. How come I remember the good old days yet not yesterday? Why am I so confused?"

"You hit your head. Before you went into the church, you almost got hit by Tyler's van and I pushed you out of the way but you hit your head. You've been a bit confused ever since."

Just a tad confused. Just enough to marry the wrong man, only I strongly believed I was the right man for her.

Jacob could not possibly love her as much as I did, because if I'd been the legitimate groom today and Bella had been confused and thought she was marrying Jake, I would have called the whole thing to a halt and taken her to hospital and made sure she had her memory back before she did anything reckless, like marrying him.

Just because she said that stuff about loving only me, who knew if it was even true or if the accident had wiped out all of her memories of loving him? Maybe she loved him even more than she loved me. Maybe I had done a terrible thing to her today but it was done now and she was mine.

I dressed Bella back in her wedding finery and sat her on my old bed while I pulled on some jeans and a T shirt I'd worn years ago so I could go downstairs and get my tux pants and jacket from the Music Room. I need not have bothered.

"Knock knock," Alice called as she walked into the room and handed me my missing clothes.

"It seems while you were practicing your piano recital, your clothes fell off."

Bella chuckled and winked at Alice.

"That may have been my fault. Did _you_ know Edward and I did the abstinence thing for three years? Isn't that insane? What a waste of three whole years. I'm so glad that's over and I don't remember them. I must have been so horny that whole time. Did we at least, you know? Do those things we did back in my Junior Year?"

"I haven't touched you for three years," I said.

Bella blanched and looked at Alice, to see if this was a joke. It had been no joke at all, for me.

"I did know Edward hasn't had sex for that long," my sister admitted.

"You mean, you know neither of us has had sex for those three years. I would never have sex with anyone else."

Alice avoided my eyes. She knew this was killing me, just the thought of his hands on her, let alone any other part of him in contact...

I redressed quickly and walked my Bella downstairs to greet her guests.

I smiled as I noticed a few of the original groom's guests were among the people here.

"Hey Seth, good to see you."

Even though he was a Quileute, Seth and I were kind of friends.

He worked as an orderly at the hospital so I often saw him when I'd come home visiting the family. To see much of Carlisle, it was easiest to go to his office, because he was there more often than he was here.

He really did need me to start working and take some of the load off his back.

"Where are you and Bella going for your honeymoon?" Seth asked.

Mom stepped in and handed Bella an envelope. She opened it and showed me the two airline tickets inside. Mom and Dad had planned to get away for two weeks for their anniversary this weekend, and I knew she had just gifted that trip to us.

"Mom, no," I protested. We could go anywhere. Upstairs, even. All we needed was one another and a soft surface.

"Your father can't get the time off after all. The locum canceled. They'll just go to waste unless you use them."

"Thanks, Mom, " I replied. "I guess we are going to the island."

"Cool," Seth replied, even though he probably had no idea where it was, or how beautiful the island was, with it's miles of pristine, sandy beaches, and the lagoon on the south side that was always warm from the long hours of sunshine.

"Bella, come and open the gifts," Rose ordered and they walked off together.

"Where was Jacob planning on taking her?" I asked Seth.

"To visit her Mom. She always wants to go see Renee lately. I know they never saw much of one another when Bella was a kid, but since Charlie died, they've become closer. Last living relative and all that. Bella has no other family apart from her Mom. Until now," he grinned.

"Do you think what I did was terrible?" I asked him. He may not know how everything came about, but he seemed so accepting that this was right. I wanted to know why he felt this way.

"Naw. Bella always loved you most. She settled for Jake because he was here and he helped her heaps with Charlie, but when she went to visit her Dad's grave, she talked about you and always said things like "Sometimes you have to choose someone who is good for you, Seth. Jake can never hurt me like Edward did. I love them both but in very different ways. Edward is fire and ice, and Jake is like a puppy or a warm pair of slippers. Sometimes comfortable is safest, and easiest. But you never forget fire and ice."

And she'd smile that sad little smile and grip the sides of the headstone so hard I'd expect there to be indentations from her fingers. She spoke the truth, even if she seems sort of befuddled today. She has always loved you the most."

"Thanks for that. I have never stopped loving her. I missed her so badly I wished I was dead, but I loved her too much to move on to a world where she didn't exist."

" That's exactly how I figured it must be for you after you two split. Mind you," Seth added,"I don't envy you when she figures all this out.. She can be quite the firecracker."

"Tell me about it," I sighed.

"Hey, Husband, come see the cool stuff we scored," Bella said, coming to pull me over to see our gifts. Behind my wife's back, Rose held up the gift tags she had removed before Bella got to the stack of wedding presents.

"Nobody put a card with any of them so I don't know how I can write thank you notes," Bella complained.

"Just do the generic 'Thanks for your presence and the presents'. That's all I did after our wedding," Rose advised her.

"Oh this one has a card," Bella exclaimed, lifting it up. We all held our breaths as she read it out loud.

"To Jake and Bella, Love from Seth. Hilarious, Seth," she said, punching his arm.

"Sorry, Bells. I thought it was funny. I guess not."

"Boys will be boys," Bella replied, picking up the delicate china teapot he had bought us.

"It's lovely. Thank you so much. Edward loves his tea of a morning."

"I knew that," Seth answered, smiling at the fact he had bought a gift with her and Jake in mind that suited us just as well. I'd been a little worried what he'd bought could have been something of significance to the tribe and would look out of place and odd as a gift for us.

"Open mine next," Alice chirped.

I couldn't wait to see what she had chosen to give them.

It was a set of bath towels, in my favourite royal blue colour, with 'B' embroidered on one and...'E' on the other.

"Perfect, Alice, thank you," Bella stated, holding them to her face to feel the softness and quality.

"You had them personalized with B and E?" I questioned.

My sister grinned.

"That is your first initial, Edward."

I would be asking more questions later.

"Oh dear, I bought the same thing. Let me take my gift back and exchange it," Rose said hurriedly, grabbing the gift Bella was reaching for next.

"That's okay, Rose. One can never have enough towels," my wife exclaimed.

"No, really. You might not care but I am never comfortable giving a duplicate gift. It loses it's significance if there are two the same."

She headed for upstairs and I excused myself and left Bella in Alice's capable hands, and caught up mid flight.

"What's the problem, Rose?" I asked.

"I was originally going to get them the ugliest ornament I could find so they felt obliged to have it out on display yet hated it, then Emmett told me to grow up and buy them something useful if not pretty. So I did the towel thing, not knowing Alice had as well. I mean, I cared so little about the gift, I didn't care if they got a dozen the same. But mine have her name and _his_ in full, I couldn't even pretend they put just the wrong initial."

She ripped open the parcel and tossed a towel to me as she held up the other, with _Isabella _in copperplate stitched across the top.

I unfolded his towel and laughed, then held it up for her to see.

_Edward_.

"But how...?" she spluttered.

"You can thank me later," Alice said from the floor below, winking at Rosalie. "I changed your order."

Rose marched downstairs and grabbed Alice by the top of her arm.

"I wrapped that gift myself two weeks ago. How could you have possibly known Edward would be the groom? He didn't know himself."

"I can't explain," Alice replied. "Maybe I'm psychic. I was in the shop waiting for them to personalize my towels and I saw your order form, and something came over me. I told the lady you had written in your husband's name by mistake, and that the groom was named Edward. I did wonder if it was my inner bitch being malicious, but it didn't feel that way. It just felt right. Like they had to be decorated with Edward and Bella's names. I can't explain it."

"Freak. And I won't forget you told that woman I was married to Jacob! I won't forgive that lie in a hurry. God, just the thought of that makes me gag."

I went back to Bella at the table opening more loot. Esme was beside her, disposing of wrapping into the woven cane waste paper basket.

Bella turned to me as she opened what I realized was my gift to them.

To her, really.

It was my favourite photo of her as a teenager, enlarged and framed in an expensive, ornate handmade crystal frame that threw out sparkles of every colour of the rainbow when it was hit by a sunbeam.

She was sitting in my meadow, alongside my then ruined cottage, a halo of wildflowers around her head. She was wearing a dress that was made from some type of white, gauzy fabric that swept down to her toes. Her feet were bare, and a second daisy chain encircled one ankle.

I'd never known how girls made daisy chains until that day, when she showed me, only hers were made from wildflowers instead.

Pink, mauve, yellow, red and purple, all in a circle.

Her beautiful long hair was blowing gently in the breeze and the red highlights stood out as they only ever did in the sunlight. She had one hand dropped lazily into the stream's icy water but as always, she didn't notice the cold temperature. I think she likes all things wet and cold.

Her lips were smiling and her eyes were sparkling as she watched me take the photo.

Her other hand, her left hand, was against her breast, over her heart and around her wedding finger was a gold friendship ring. I'd bought it for her on her sixteenth birthday, the very day this photo was taken.

She'd thrown it back at me, on that terrible night when I'd found her in bed with Jake.

Until today, I'd worn it on a gold chain around my neck, but it had become a stand in for the wedding ring I would buy her this week. It was just pure luck I had a ring for her at the wedding today, at all.

It was back where it belonged, too. Back on her finger.

I could remember clearly what she was saying as I took this photo.

"_I love you, Edward."_

What may have been the most inappropriate wedding gift ever was now the most perfect and she smiled as she held it up and looked past the frame at me.

"I still love you, Edward, even more today than I did on that day, and I never imagined that would be possible."

"This is going to hang in our bedroom, where I can see it every morning as I wake up. It will be the second thing I look at, after I finish looking at you and admiring your beauty and kissing you awake."

She smirked.

"Then it may be quite a while until you get to look at this photo, because I have plans for us every morning after you awaken me."

"Oh God, somebody get them a room," Alice sighed. "Actually, Bella, you should go check on your going away outfit, just to make sure it's what you want to wear when you and Edward leave for your honeymoon. I left it on Edward's old bed."

"I should come with you, and make sure I approve," I added.

I did approve, twice, though to be honest I forgot to look at the dress.

Bella pulled me into my bedroom and did things to me that had never happened there before, because we always kept our activities restricted to her bedroom at Charlie's, or on my piano in an empty house. We didn't need Emmett's editorial comments on our moans and groans.

When we finally felt satiated enough to go back downstairs, and had washed ourselves in my bathroom again, Bella laughed and held up a tiny scrap of black lace that had fallen off my bed. It was apparently a honeymoon nightgown but if Alice had paid for it by the amount of fabric it had taken to make it, she must have only paid about fifty cents.

"You can tear this off me tonight," Bella teased and ran for the door.

I caught her on the landing and threw her back against the wall. We could hear voices floating up to us through the circular stairwell but chances were nobody would look up and see us, as I pushed back inside her and held her hands against the wall.

"You are a naughty bad girl who will be getting a paddling for this wanton behaviour later," I growled as I thrust into her once again.

"Edward wants to spank me. It's all your fault, making me do abstinence for **three** years," she growled back.

I felt her reach her peak and followed with my own orgasm then slapped her ass and sent her back for yet another clean up in my en suite.

Bella was watching me in the bathroom mirror and suddenly her face dropped.

"What's wrong?" I asked, alarmed. Has she remembered?

"Did you stop loving me? There has to be a real reason you stopped making love to me for that long. I don't believe it was so the honeymoon would be perfect because you always said practice makes perfect and you wanted to practice for our future honeymoon every chance we got. You left me, didn't you, Edward? You broke up with me and we have only just gotten back together."

"We did break up," I confirmed. "But you are so wrong about me falling out of love with you. I have never stopped loving you. I have never loved or wanted anyone but you."

"But if you didn't leave me because of someone else, or because your heart changed, why did you go?"

"We had some issues, Baby. I don't want to get into them now, and spoil this day, okay? We will talk about it later, one day soon."

She looked terrified, like a baby deer caught in the headlights of the car was about to run it down.

"Baby, I love you and you love me, right? There's nothing we can't get past, Bella. We will be okay. We will work through what happened."

"I know it wasn't me," she said defensively. "I have never looked at another man. I have only ever loved you."

God how I wished that was the truth.

"You love me now and that's all I care about," I said honestly.

Whatever happened was in the past and I had no choice other than to accept she had been attracted to Jacob and had even considered him worth marrying. I could never understand how she could love two men at once, and I hoped Seth was right, and that Jacob had only ever held the smaller part of her heart.

I had been devastated that night at her party when I walked in and saw her kissing Jake or Jake kissing her, whichever way it went down. It didn't even matter; even if it had been his idea, she had still gone along with it.

It was only kissing, I could forgive kissing if it meant I got to keep her.

But that night...the night after Charlie had recently died, when I blew off an exam and hoped I'd pass anyway because my other grades were all excellent, and came home to her...

I knew I'd been wrong the moment they jumped from her bed and I saw Jake had been both fully clothed, and only lying under a single blanket, but Bella had been inside her covers and sheets. And she was wearing a very unattractive old pair of sweats and a ratty top that had seen better days and was nothing like the pretty little girlie pajama sets she'd worn all those years when I'd been visiting her in her bed. They'd been short and sexy and way too brief to keep her warm, because that had been my job.

Those sets had said "_I'm a girl who wants to dress prettily for you because I want you as much as you want me."_

The outfit she wore with Jake said "_I don't care what I look like because you don't matter to me, not in that way. These were the first things I grabbed from my closet. They'll do."_

But by then too many words had been flung at each of us and Jake's words had cut me to the bone and revealed the truth that Alice had harped about for years.

I was only doing it for Bella, so we could move on with our lives and be grown-ups and be a family of our own together, but I had thrown out the baby with the bathwater and left her feeling abandoned.

And I knew by the look on her face as she crammed her clothes into that suitcase and marched out the door while Jacob and I were still tearing one another apart, that I had wounded her too badly for her to be able to just forget what I'd said and get past that whole mess.

And Jake had seen it too and stopped yelling.

He'd shrugged, and grinned and put on his coat and held out his hand to me.

"Thanks for fucking up your own relationship with the girl I love. It's okay, I'll be there for her. Give her a shoulder to cry on. Kiss her tears away. Rub her back and maybe her front, too, who knows? I mean, girls hate fights but they love make up sex. It won't be the first time I've made love to her but it will be the best and I have you to thank for that."

I was so devastated to be right, even if it hadn't been happening that night, that I drove to Seattle and sat in the airport for sixteen hours until a seat became available, and then I went back to NY and tried to live without her.

While waiting for a cancellation to come up, I'd racked my brains, wondering when the first time he'd had sex with her had happened?

Around the time of her nineteenth birthday party? Was I forgiving her for a kiss when things had gone much farther than that? Had I been a blind fool?

Did it matter? She had come back to me for a time and we had been happy.

I should have taken a break when Charlie got shot and helped her nurse him but my eye was always on the big picture and the ultimate goal. Get qualified and come back and make her mine forever.

"Do I even want to know?" Bella asked. "It must have been horrendous if it kept us apart for three years. I can't believe I didn't head for La Push and jump off the nearest cliff."

"You went to stay with Renee in Florida, before you came back to Forks but our issues were rather complex and we didn't see one another again for a long time."

Not until today, in fact.

"I don't think I want to know. I couldn't handle finding out how we managed to survive apart. I would never have thought that could be possible to endure."

"Edward? Bella? Get down here. The food is served and it's customary for the bride and groom to be at the wedding breakfast," Alice called.

I checked that the bride's gown was smoothed down and sitting in place and took her hand.

"Come on , Baby, our public awaits."

"And then our honeymoon. On an island! I can't wait," she said happily.

I held her hand tightly in my own as she negotiated the stairs in those pretty white heels that had been up close and personal to my ears, and kissed her when we reached the bottom step.

"Well done, Mrs Cullen. You made it without a single slip up."

Well, none that you remembered, at least.

X~x~X~x~** Cheers for each and every review xxxxx**


	3. Chapter 3

Second Chances

Part 3

"Do you want to visit Renee before we go to the island?" I asked Bella as we headed for SeaTac. It would be only polite to let her know her new son-in-law was not the man she expected him to be, and anyway, Seth said Bella and Renee were tight now, and that was new. I'd always hated the way Renee acted more like an occasional friend than a mother to her daughter and regardless of her new life and new baby, Bella was her first child and deserved to be treated way better than she had been.

Bella shrugged.

"Maybe. But if she didn't consider it worth travelling to Forks to see me get married, I'm not so sure I want to bring the mountain to Mohammed, so to speak. She could have got herself organized and done it bit by bit, as a road trip. I went to her wedding," she replied.

I went to that wedding as well.

The road trip had been one of my favourite times with Bella. Just the two of us, driving across the country, staying at little inns and bed and breakfast houses, and keeping off the main roads where possible and making a romantic adventure of it.

By the time we arrived, we really hadn't cared much at all about Renee and Phil's actual wedding.

The trip had been all about us, and spending some prolonged quality time together.

The trip home had been even better, because there was no deadline to meet. No wedding scheduled to happen so we didn't have had to time everything down to the last hour.

It had occurred in a break, so we had all the time in the world, so it seemed. It took us three weeks longer than we originally planned to get home but those three weeks were filled with precious memories.

We could have flown and done the whole thing in a weekend but I guess we were both aware at that point that we had not spent enough time together, and so the road trip had been the answer.

We came back so bonded it never ever entered my head again that things could end any other way than the way I'd always imagined.

With pretty vows and promises, and my ring on her finger.

"She is pregnant, though. I imagine that makes everything very tiring and difficult. A road trip was probably too uncomfortable to contemplate," I suggested.

Bella frowned and scratched her head.

"I know she is pregnant because everyone else seems to know that for a fact, but it still seems surreal to me. Renee having another baby, all these years later. I guess it's only fair seeing Phil doesn't have kids, but now our first baby will be much of an age with my sibling, and that just seems weird, right?"

I smiled at the knowledge she did still plan to have our baby, and maybe soon. Whether it would be right to go ahead and let that happen before she remembered was something I needed to consider and maybe talk through with Renee, because she obviously would have to be told the truth. There were so few explanations for how and why this groom substitution had happened.

She knew her daughter thought everything through and considered every aspect of every decision she ever made so there was no way to fob Renee off with the story that Bella had simply acted on impulse and changed her mind at the last minute.

"I guess maybe we should go see her and make sure she is okay. She is my mother," Bella said wearily, as though this was one hundred per cent duty and not something she really wanted.

But then, things had changed, hadn't they? Bella was back to the mindset she used to hold of her Mom, not in the later, better, more connected version that Seth had described.

This was getting complicated.

"Maybe we should just surprise her, and turn up at their door. That way we aren't committed to stay any particular length of time as we would be if we called first and she has the chance to invite us for a week or whatever. This was we can even just stay for coffee and use the excuse we are booked in somewhere for our honeymoon and can't stay over."

"You don't want to even stay overnight?" I queried.

"Edward, Renee and I seldom have much to say to one another, and if she is so pregnant she couldn't fly, then maybe guests are not that desirable at the moment. Just more work for her."

I didn't want Bella and Renee to go back to how they had been, but how did I explain the new closeness without getting myself into trouble and risk prompting her memory back to the real present?

Renee opened the door and we all three stood still in shock and surprise.

Hers was brought about because to her mind, the wrong husband had accompanied her daughter. Ours was because, in her arms, a very pregnant Renee was holding a toddler of maybe two or two and half years of age and the child was a clone of my wife.

"Mom! Who is this? What's going on?" Bella asked.

"Who is this? You are asking me who your sister is when you are standing at my door with your ex boyfriend instead of your new husband? Shouldn't I be the one asking those questions?" Renee replied.

"You did know about the wedding, then?" Bella asked.

"Of course I did. I thought you understood why I couldn't come. Are you okay, sweetie?" she checked."Come inside and sit down and tell me everything."

"You are looking well, Renee," I murmured as we followed her into her house.

"Fancy seeing you here, Edward. You are looking quite smug, if I may say so. Tell me what's going on."

She set the little brunette Bella clone down on the floor and sank into a chair with a sigh of relief to be rid of one burden, the detachable one, and off her feet.

My eyes did not want to leave the face of the little girl. Her eyes were exactly the same deep brown Bella's were and her hair was identical to my wife's.

Renee saw my intense scrutiny and blushed.

"Edward, I gather Bella has forgotten to mention to you that I have a second daughter. This is Lisa."

I could feel something there, in the atmosphere. Something Renee did not want me to pick up on. She had a secret involving this child that she was hoping would not come up in conversation.

"Lisa? Mom, how could I forget I have a sister? This is crazy," Bella stated.

"You were with me when she was born," Renee said in surprise. "How could you forget that bloodbath?"

"I need to use the powder room," Bella said, and started walking down the hall beside the room we were in.

"Mom? Have you moved it?" she asked nervously.

"Phil did some renovations and incorporated it so it's now Lisa's en suite," Renee said, confused at why Bella did not remember this. "You can get to it through her bedroom or use the newer powder room near the backdoor. Lisa can show you."

The little girl dashed out of the room.

"Oh, thanks, we found it," Bella called back a minute later. "Lisa says I can use her bathroom then she's going to show me her dolls."

We heard the door close.

Renee turned back to me for an explanation.

"Bella was almost run down by a car at the church. I managed to push her out of it's pathway but she hit her head rather badly. She's lost her short term memory. It seems to have erased the last three years or so," I said.

"So she thought you and she were still together...I see. And you didn't see fit to tell her the truth? About Jacob?"

"We did try. I never lied to her. She assumed," I answered. "And it didn't appear to be in my best interests to pursue that subject, I admit that. But I think we both have secrets, don't we, Renee?"

"What do you mean?" she asked nervously. "I have no secrets. I don't lie or omit to tell the ones I love the truth."

"So you are saying Lisa is Phil's child? Phil, the six foot seven inch baseball player you married five years ago. The tall blonde haired, blue eyed guy in your wedding photos. You are trying to tell me you, another blue eyed blonde, and he, managed to produce a little girl who looks so like Bella she could be her twin. Yet Bella got her colouring from your first husband, Charlie Swan."

"You obviously know the truth," she sighed. "Just say it. Out loud. I need someone to say it and force me to acknowledge the real facts."

"Lisa is my child," I stated, completely sure I was right. This was the child whose delivery had left the scar on my Bella.

"Edward! Don't be absurd! How could you be her father? Are you delusional? You and I have never..."

I narrowed my eyes.

"Lisa is clearly the reason Bella stayed here with you after she ran away from Forks after our bust up. "

"Okay, I admit that is true," she replied. "I needed her help after the caesarian . It wasn't quite the straightforward affair Bella's birth had been. But Lisa's paternity...she inherited her colouring from the same place Bella did. She's Charlie's child. He never knew."

She covered her face with her hands and started weeping loudly into them.

"I'm such a bad person. I left Charlie and then I married Phil, and only after that, I remembered why I loved Charlie in the first place. I went to visit him after he got injured. Bella went out to do the grocery shopping, to give us some time to say our tearful goodbyes. We were just hugging one another, and then the kissing changed; you know what I mean..., and things happened. It wasn't planned. I don't think Charlie even thought he was still capable of making love by then. Old feelings resurfaced but it was too late for us. He knew he was dying and he felt he had nothing to offer me.

I came home and pretended nothing had happened but of course, I was pregnant.

Phil knows and he only agreed to me keeping the baby if I promised to have a child to him as well. That's what this pregnancy is all about."

"Wait. You are saying Lisa is your kid? You had an affair with Charlie and got pregnant? She's not Bella's?"

"Bella doesn't have any children, Edward."

"Where did she get the scar from? I've seen it, Renee. She had a c section at some point, a couple of years ago by the look of it."

"Oh that. Bella had surgery for fibroids. Not a c section. I thought you were studying to be a doctor."

Of course. They must have been extensive to have necessitated a wound that large, though.

"She and Jake were never that sure that what they shared was enough for marriage. Well, Jake thought it was and Bella knew it wasn't. Not under normal circumstances. But Bella's fibroids mean she should have kids sooner rather than later. Hers are the type that don't usually respond to drug therapy and she has to have them removed regularly. Once she has her family, she will have to have a hysterectomy to stop the whole cycle of surgery and new ones appearing. Every lot of surgery weakens her uterus.

So, when she found out this time the drugs had worked thus far, they decided to take a chance and have two kids quickly so that way, even if this was a once off and the medication never worked again, at least she'd have her children. Jake was willing, of course, because he has always wanted some way to tie her to him."

"So it was never a great love match?" I asked in surprise.

"I suppose Bella loves him in her own way but there's no chance he is her One, because we all know who holds that title, don't we? Edward, I'm glad she married you. At least this way she did get to marry the man she loves and really wants to have children to. But if she has forgotten the past three years, then she doesn't know she has to get pregnant as soon as possible. They even timed the wedding around her fertility cycle so she could start trying to conceive on their honeymoon."

"She's not on the Pill?" I said in alarm.

"No, she has been off it long enough for it to have left her system and she's been taking fertility drugs to help ensure..."

She paused at the consternation on my face.

"But if she's pregnant, we are not going to know who the father is."

"She can't be pregnant. They were told not to consummate until tonight. It will be her first time with Jake. Well, it would have been. It was more sex to have a baby than to celebrate their union. I was rather worried as she doesn't really see Jake 'that way' if you know what I mean. He's just the means to an end. He was willing and she needed a sperm donor and a father for her kids. Jake took advantage and said he'd be both those things for her if she married him. She didn't have the luxury of time to spend finding someone she could love in the right way, with the fibroids likely to regrow at any point. So she agreed to a marriage of convenience, from her point of view, anyway."

"I can't believe she didn't come to me. She has always known I would give her anything she wanted."

"Edward, she has always wanted your children but she thought it was too late and you'd have moved on by now. She didn't think it would be right to ask you to let her have a couple of babies when you probably had some other woman in mind to be the mother of your children."

"That woman doesn't exist. No matter what happened between me and any theoretical woman in the future, that future would never have included marriage or kids," I replied. "Not with anyone who wasn't Bella."

"So, it seems, things have worked out for the best," Renee pointed out.

"She's really never slept with him lately?" I questioned. "I know she did at least once, in the past. Jake told me."

Renee looked amused.

"He wishes. If you had been listening in to the phone conversations Bella and I have had together lately, you'd know there was no truth in that. She's been worried how bad the sex would be with him when she's only ever been with you. If she had ever slept with him, she would know that answer already."

"But what he said ensured I would stay away and never try to reconcile..."

"Exactly," Renee replied.

Right now things shifted.

Now I hate Black a Hell of a lot more than I ever hated myself and if he was here now, I'd kill him.

All those years apart, never even trying to contact Bella to talk things over, because he made me believe she had betrayed me.

"Let it go," Renee stated. "You and Bella have to start a baby and you don't need any thoughts of anyone but the two of you in your head. Babies deserve to be conceived in an atmosphere of peace and harmony and love. A state of bliss. Don't let him take that away from you as well."

The bedroom door opened and the little sister of my wife emerged at a run.

"Mommy, Bella says Marigold used to be her dolly when she was little. Is that true?" she asked, placing a rather battered baby doll onto Renee's lap.

"She sure was. And she was my dolly before that. My Mom bought her for me when I was three or four years old."

Renee lovingly soothed the doll's sparse hair down and kissed her daughter's head.

"I used to sew clothes for her and I only learned how to knit so I could make her some warm Winter sweaters," Bella added, standing beside me and taking my arm.

"So, where are you two off to on your honeymoon?" Renee asked.

"Edward's family's island," Bella replied, smiling happily. "It's going to be awesome."

"Most honeymoon's are," Renee giggled.

"It's a private island. There won't be anyone else there but Bella and me," I added.

"So the dress code is optional?" Renee chuckled. "Don't get too sunburned, you two. Especially on areas that are usually protected from the sun."

My eyes instantly became half closed and hooded at the thought of the long, sunny naked days that awaited us. And the nights that would follow them.

"We should go," Bella and I said in unison.

"Call us when the baby arrives and we'll come visit again," I promised.

"I have a feeling you will have other things on your mind," Bella's Mom replied.

She hugged us both and we said goodbye to the child who may look just like the baby we would hopefully be creating any day now, and headed to the airport.

I felt completely at peace with everything now.

Whatever the future held, it was how things had always been meant to be.

X~x~X~x

BPOV

I flopped down in the edge of the lagoon and felt the warm water sooth away the overused parts of my body. I actually hoped that Edward would not find me for a few minutes at least. All the man ever thought about was sex and how many different ways we could invent to do it. And I suspected he was challenging himself to make love to me at least one time more than the day before, each day and as we'd been here three weeks ... yeah, it was practically sex every hour, on the hour.

I wasn't sure how much longer I'd be able to walk or sit down.

I'm not complaining, because I know it had been along time since we had made love before the wedding.

It had been like giving him my virginity again.

He'd taken it just as enthusiastically the second time around.

My brain was becoming cloudy and confused from all the sex and that was not good. I had to keep my wits about me so Edward never knew what I had done.

I had to remember to forget anything and everything that had happened within the last three years so I never spoke about them by mistake and let on my secret.

Amnesia.

It was a handy tool.

Hell, don't judge me.

It was all Jake's fault in the first place so don't be getting all sympathetic about him.

All I wanted was a little sperm donation in a paper cup, and I'd even been willing to 'help him' provide his contribution.

But no. He had a price attached even though he knew it was a much higher price than I ever wanted to pay.

Then there was the girl's night out.

Alice, Rose and I, and a visit to a cinema to watch a movie about a girl who fell and hit her head and forgot the past five years.

"Forgetting three years would do me," I'd commented.

"If only there was a way to wipe that slate clean and take up where you two left off," Alice replied. "You two are so meant to be together but everything that's happened can't be undone, more's the pity."

We left and went back to Rose's house. Emmett was out with Jazz so we had the whole place to ourselves.

And the whole very well stocked bar.

Rose was a two pot screamer and was unconscious on the carpet before Alice and I even got to our third Mojitos.

As always, drinking made me maudlin and I started crying over my lost love.

"He won't ever come back and try and reconcile," Alice replied. "You know what he is like. He has his pride."

"I don't get that," I argued. "What did I ever do for Edward to wipe me out of his life so completely? I waited so long for him to call and want to talk about what happened, and give us the change to make up and start over."

She had looked embarrassed.

"I don't believe him. What he said. If that's any comfort."

"What Edward said? What did he say?" I asked.

"He said Jacob told him you and he had cheated on him and slept together."

"That's not true," I almost shouted. "How could Edward believe that?"

"Well, you did have your tongue down Jake's throat at our birthday party."

"And we both know whose fault that was," I retorted, glaring at Rose. She was the one who had added a 'little something' to my cola that night, to calm me down because Edward was late.

I was an alcohol virgin and it had hit me in ways I had not expected.

Like letting Jake hold my hand and kiss me.

Oh, he'd kissed me before but I usually cut him off pretty quick smart and put him in his place, but the haze of alcohol had made me lose a sense of time and space, and clearly, good taste.

Edward had forgiven me and in time, I guess I more or less forgave Rose.

But I didn't ask her to be in my wedding party because although I forgave her, I did not forget that her actions started the whole downward spiral.

"What we need is a grand occasion to get Edward to come home to, and then you should kidnap him and drag him off to the forest and lock him away. Then fuck him until he agrees to believe the truth and not the lie. Get him all dazzled."

"You could put your wedding forward and invite him home. He would never miss his sister's wedding."

"You know who else's wedding he wouldn't miss?" she asked.

"Whose?" I answered.

"Yours."

"But I'm never getting married. If I can't have Edward,there's no way I'd ever marry anyone else."

"So, you are saying 'No' to Jake and just accepting you will never have Edward and never have kids either? By the time you do meet anyone new and worthwhile, those operations will have taken up all your chances at being able to carry a baby anyway."

"I don't want Jake's kids, not really. I don't particularly like him at all, you know. I'd never want his children if I could have Edward's."

"But if you did agree to Jake's proposal, and you did book the church, I bet my brother would have to come back for it just to torture himself a little more."

"He is a masochist," I agreed.

Alice poured us another drink and the plan started to form.

"How about this? You agree to marry Jake the Liar and invite Edward. I will be your bridesmaid and once Edward arrives, I'll trip you up and you fall down and hit your head. Nobody will doubt it wasn't just one of your regular accidents."

"And where does that get me?" I queried as I sipped.

"You 'forget' the past three years and grab Edward's arm and steamroller him down the aisle. Pretend you think you two are still together. And you get the wedding he never quite got around to organizing back in the day. He regrets that so much. You'd be doing him a favour as well. He can't even fuck other women, Bella. What sort of life does he have to look forward to?"

"God, a life without sex? Just like mine?" I sighed. "But it would be so hard to pull off. And anyway, Renee would stand up and object."

"Then time it for when she gets too pregnant to fly. You know she hates it when Phil drives and she won't be in any state to drive herself..."

"So, I fall, get amnesia, force Edward to marry me, then, what, get miraculously cured and end up with bath towels with Jake's and my names on them? Always there to remind Edward of the Kissing Thing."

"I'll take care of the bath towels. I'll tell everyone that's what I'm buying you so they have to choose something else."

"But there's so many things I'd need to forget. I don't think I could fake it."

"We have weeks yet. We'll practice. I'll invent scenarios and you work out what you should not know. Like, what has changed at your Mom's in the last three years?"

"She's had Lisa and renovated."

"Okay. Then what's changed in the house? What's moved or been got rid of? You could ask where the old sunroom was, I know she got it changed into a second tv room for her kids. What other rooms are different?"

So it began.

Just a game at first.

Just a theoretical mind game Alice and I perfected. She grilled me like she had in High School, when we were about to do exams.

"What if he asks you about Lauren?"  
"I don't know she married Eric and cheated and moved in with Joey."

"Okay, good. Mike?"

"He is still with Jessica? Wouldn't he have been, three years ago?"

We had to check our facts because so many things had happened that we hadn't really cared about but all the same, I had to unlearn them now.

Then, of course, when the day actually arrived, Fate took over and almost punished me in a permanent way and I admit, I almost did forget everything.

But Edward saved me and I knew it was a sign.

I always believed in signs.

Edward saved me because he wished I was still his, and I knew that without any doubt the moment he pulled me inside his embrace and kissed the top of my head, so what harm was done, really?

We realigned the Universe and punished Jake at the same time.

He robbed me of three years of being with my Edward.

Being stood up at the altar was the least he deserved.

Of course, Alice nearly blew it, mucking around with my dress and not being concerned I was really brain injured. I had to speak the truth to Edward inside that church. There was nobody else I would ever marry. If he hadn't gone along with marrying me, and Jake had remained as the groom, I would have turned at the last moment and told Carlisle I felt sick and had the worst headache ever, and he'd have rushed me to hospital.

But whatever.

It had all gone to plan and with any luck, baby Cullen is growing inside me and kicking too gently for me to be able to feel her yet.

That was another reason I'd needed Jake. To get the fertility treatment I needed to have me primed up for a honeymoon baby, I'd needed a potential groom.

The fact I had no intention of it ever being him didn't bother me, once I knew he was the reason Edward never contacted me again.

Well, guess what?

I'm never contacting Jake again, so we are even.

I know, it's all very High School drama club, but hey, I'm getting made love to by the only man I ever wanted inside my body and I'm wearing his ring, so, mission accomplished.

"Bella, there you are," my Prince Charming exclaimed and flopped down beside me.

As always, he gazes into my eyes and in his, I can see the faint fear he still has, that one day I'll 'remember' and have a meltdown.

I mean, maybe I will.

Just to see how he reacts.

I'd love to hear him stutter and try and convince me he did this for me, for us, because I know he did.

After all, that's why I did it, too.

We were as good as married right from the start and you know what they say.

What God has joined together let no man put asunder.

Jake ignored that and now he gets to pay.

"Ready for dinner? I've made your favourite," my husband informs me.

"You are my favourite," I reply.

He scoops me up into his arms and heads not for the door to the dining room, but for the French Doors to the bedroom.

Dinner is chicken.

It tastes just as good cold.

But I prefer my Edward hot, so excuse us, please, won't you?

THE END


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